back

This newsletter is dedicated to articles helpful to those individuals who desire to pursue a low carbohydrate diet in an effort to live a higher quality lifestyle.

Many people choose lowcarbing to lose weight an maintain that weight loss. Others chose certain diets as a more natural way of eating. Still others choose lowcarb in an effort to alleviate symptoms of diseases of modern western society including type 2 diabetes, polycystic ovary disease, syndrome X and candida albicans overgrowth to name a few.

This is not diet specific.
Articles appearing in this newsletter are not dedicated to any particular diet. Every individual is just that. We are all individuals are react according to our own set of biological rules. What works for one may not work for anyone else. Most results of scientific studies are based on statistical probability. That means it applies to only a percentage of the population. There are no absolute truths.

I have more experience with my own HiMoLoCarb diet, but there are things in the diets such as Protein Power, The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, The Dr. Atkins diet, Neanderthin and BodyOpus which are common to all or can be transferred from one to another. Some individuals may find a little of this and a little of that is needed to accomplish their goals.

The goal of this newsletter is to try to give the reader another conduit for information which they can use in their everyday life. This will include summaries of pertinent scientific publications, news and people in the news as it relates to dieting, and advice, recipes and websites to help you achieve and maintain your goals.

Insulin - The New Test for Cardiac Disease Risk

Jack M. Goldberg, Ph.D.

It should be making headlines all over the world. A new research paper published in the June 24th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (Fasting insulin and apolipoprotein B levels and low-density lipoprotein particle size as risk factors for ischemic heart disease, Lamarche, B et al JAMA, 1998;279:1955-61) clearly identifies fasting serum insulin levels as the best risk factor for developing heart diseases such as angina, atherosclerosis and heart attacks. Along with two other markers called Apolipoprotein B and Low Density Lipoprotein Particle Size, they demonstrated that 97.6% of heart disease victims has at least one of these tests abnormal in the preceding 5 years. 76.4 % of victims had two abnormal results and 45.8% had all three abnormal tests. This suggests that these tests seem to cluster in heart disease victims. How did these tests compare to the traditional tests for cholesterol, triglycerides and HDL cholesterol? The researchers found that these lipid tests were no longer statistically significant when corrected for the influence of the new tests. WOW.

Why aren't the news services screaming this from the roof tops?
That’s not to say the cholesterol and triglyceride tests are not important. They are, but their importance is entirely co-dependant on insulin, LDL particle size and apolipoprotein B.
What is going on?

Apolipoprotein B measures the protein which is common to LDL, VLDL and chylomicrons. That means that all of these particles can be atherogenic (cause atherosclerosis). To single out LDL as the "bad" cholesterol overlooks the problems which can be caused by VLDL and Chylomicroms. These are the triglyceride carrying lipoproteins. These are the lipoproteins most often abnormal in obesity and diabetes. That is why fat and diabetic people die most often from heart disease.
The size and density of the LDL particle has been shown to correlate inversely with heart disease prevalence. Observations from three prospective studies provide pretty strong evidence that the small dense LDL particles are susceptible to oxidation damage. ( That's why we take antioxidants.) This decreases the liver's ability to clear them and they end up in the walls of the arteries. Other studies have shown that the size and density of the LDL is very dependent on the type of fat you eat. Guess what? Those studies have shown that saturated fats did NOT cause increases in the small dense LDL levels. Sure they caused an increase in serum cholesterol, but it was in the large boyant LDL particles which are not associated with heart disease.

Furthermore, the level of small dense LDL particles has been shown to correlate directly with serum triglyceride levels. That means the higher your triglycerides, the smaller and denser are the LDL particles.

Now that I've got you all confused with the science, let me explain in plain English what relevance this all has with Low Carbohydrate diets.

We are all trying to reduce our insulin levels. We are overweight due to insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. That is strike one in the paper described above.

The hyperinsulinemia not only causes obesity, it also causes our serum triglycerides to become elevated because it inhibits the enzymes called lipases which break down our serum triglycerides in the VLDL particles. High triglycerides = small dense LDL particles = strike 2 .

Now we have elevated VLDL particles and many of us have high LDL cholesterol particles. That means we will have elevated levels of apolipoprotein B. That’s strike 3 and that gives us an 18 fold increased risk of developing heart disease in the next 5 years than someone with none or just one of these risk factors such as an elevated LDL cholesterol.

What can we do to avert the inevitable. We must reduce our weight and our fasting insulin levels. Almost everyone who lives on a low carbohydrate lifestyle will immediately reduce their fasting insulins and serum triglycerides dramatically. This along with the weight loss will change your risk profile for heart disease for the better.
Lowcarb living is a lifelong commitment. Lowcarb living is also your long life ticket.

Keep the faith. Keep the diet.

Recipe Corner

This month we have a second medicinal recipe. Strawberry Sorbet.
Place your ice-cream maker bowl in the freezer overnight if you use the machines that don't use ice.

Just before dinner starts place 1/2 teaspoon of gum guar (available at some health food stores) into one cup of boiling water and stir to dissolve.

Into your blender add one cup of strawberries, 5 packets of nutrasweet™ , one cup of water and one egg white. Blend until smooth.
Add the strawberry mix to the hot gum guar and whip with a whisk.